Ahve, and welcome to Empress of Rome, a podcast about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr. Ancient

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr. Rianna Evans, a lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode XLVI,. Trajan conquers Dacia.

When we last left Trajan, he was already a respected general,

and after being named nervous successor, became emperor with fairly popular acclaim.

But Trajan is a man of action.

So what does a man of action do when he's got the might of the Roman Empire at his hands?

Well, he puts it to good use.

Good news for Trajan.

Bad news for Dacia. He's Rhianna Evans.

Dacia is approximately modern day Romania in Eastern Europe and in fact Romania

is called Romania because it was a Roman province and therefore the people spoke Latin there.

And in fact the Romanian language is traceable back to Latin.

It's a romance language sort of in a sea of Slavic and other Eastern European

languages. How far back does Rome's history with Deisha Go? Is it a place that it cared about or was concerned about it all?

It was concerned about it when it caused problems for it.

So way back in the Republic, before the time of Julius Caesar back in the second century

they had been a battle against the people's

north of the Danube.

But the Romans had not actually seemed

to have contemplated crossing and conquering Dacia until late in the first century

...